Sanibel Journal

When Roger and Lucia Wilcox would come to their winter home on Sanibel Island in the 1950s and 1960s, they led a relatively quiet life.  People on Sanibel were aware that the couple was well-known in the East Hampton, New York, artists’ world, where they often entertained and organized events.  In Long Island, their names were frequently in the newspapers.  But Sanibel people respected their privacy. Lucia Anavi was born in Beirut in 1902.   Her mother was French, and her father was Lebanese.    Early in life, she started to become a gifted painter, sculptor, and cook.   So at age 14, she left home to live in Paris. There she became a part of a legendary group of artists, including Piet Mondrian, Picasso, Marc Chagall, Carlos Montoya, Max and Jimmy Ernst, and many more.   Some of them encouraged her to go to night school, so she enrolled in the Académie Ronsard. In 1938, she and her partner at the time, Fernand Leger, left Paris for New York at the urging of arts patrons Gerald a

April 23, 2015 – Dick, who is one of our neighbors on Pine Avenue (a neighbor to the land we own that we had planned to build upon), had graciously offered to take us out in his boat so we could see the house we are buying from the back – that is, from the water.  On Tuesday, Tom and I took him up on his generous offer. Our soon-to-be-home, from the rear. We’d just had lunch with my mom at Cip’s.  Back at our house, we donned hats and sunglasses; then the three of us went to Dick’s place on Dinken Bayou. The bayou is a super-slow, no wake zone for boats because manatees like to be there – and so do dolphins.  We didn’t see those creatures on Tuesday, but we saw plenty of interesting houses from the water. We pulled out into the bayou from the end of the canal that parallels Pine Avenue, then proceeded north, passing the houses of Harbour Lane and Coconut Drive on the bayou side.  The second to the last house on that side